Recorded October 21, 2020
One of China’s leading scholars writing about international law from a Chinese perspective, Professor Cai Congyan, will talk about the ways in which an increasingly wealthy and powerful China has evolved from “selective adaptation” of existing international legal norms to “norm entrepreneurship.”
Event Recording: World War II Reparations in Contemporary East Asia
Tim Webster, a professor of law, has dedicated many years to exploring the law, sociology, and politics of East Asia's World War II reparations movements -- which are still ongoing 75 years after the war’s end. Why are the last surviving war victims in Asia and their families still pursuing claims for reparations? Professor Webster will give an overview of the major legal cases, settlement agreements, international treaties, efforts by civil society organizations, and political negotiations to allocate liability for World War II.
Event Recording: China and Authoritarian International Law
International law has mainly been a product of liberal democracies since World War II. But democracy and liberalism are under assault from populists, economic nationalists, and autocrats. Tom Ginsburg, a professor of law and political science, asks what international law might look like if the global trend toward authoritarianism continues. He argues that today’s authoritarian regimes, including China, are using international law to promote their own survival, and may end up reshaping it in important ways.
Event Recording: Celebrating Jerry Cohen & Six Decades of U.S.-Asia Cooperation in Law
The U.S.-Asia Law Institute celebrated its founder and director emeritus, Professor Jerome A. Cohen, and his unique contributions to U.S.-Asia mutual understanding and cooperation in the field of law. 2020 marked Jerry Cohen’s 90th birthday and his official retirement from teaching at NYU – although not his retirement from writing, speaking, advocacy, and devotion to the U.S.-Asia Law Institute.
Event Recording: The New Cold War on Social Media
Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet policy expert and advocate for governing the Internet according to international human rights standards, says the U.S. government’s recent moves to ban two leading Chinese-owned apps, TikTok and We Chat, and purge Chinese companies like Huawei from American networks are simply another version of “Internet sovereignty,” and will do little to protect the human rights of Internet users in the United States or around the world.
U.S.-Asia Law Institute Colloquium on Globalization, International Law and East Asia
A special colloquium on globalization, international law and East Asia hosted by Professors Jose Alvarez and Frank Upham. At this colloquium, authors do not formally present their papers. Instead, they engage with reaction papers written by students as well as the hosts, Professors Upham and Alvarez.
Event Recording: U.S.-China Business Relations - Can't Decouple
The Diplomat: The Vagaries of Crime and Punishment in China
Newsweek: Don't Rush to Fully Normalize Relations With Taiwan
From Faculty Director Emeritus Jerome A. Cohen: "Trump, by contrast, is playing the China card to "decouple" the U.S. from the PRC. And Xi Jinping's government, while expressing concern about this disturbing trend, refuses, unlike Deng Xiaoping's government of the 1970s, to brook any compromise...Yet none of these disputes, even the South China Sea, has as much explosive potential as contemplated changes in America's relations with Taiwan."
ONLINE | Law, Justice and Human Rights in China | Free 10-Week Online Seminar
This 10-session seminar will introduce the legal system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – in practice as well as theory – with an emphasis on institutions, norms, procedures, personnel and ideology relating to constitutional law, criminal justice and human rights. We will view the contemporary legal process against the background of China’s legal traditions and pre-Communist efforts to develop a modern legal system. We will also consider the relevant experiences of Chinese societies in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The Diplomat: The Misuse of China’s Mental Hospitals
The Economist: Righting wrongs - China is growing more willing to review dodgy convictions
Jerome A. Cohen Honored with the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon from the Government of the Republic of China
July 2, 2020 — Jerome A. Cohen, NYU professor of law emeritus and faculty director emeritus of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, was awarded the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon by the Government of the Republic of China. Ambassador Lily L. W. Hsu, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, bestowed the honor on Professor Cohen in a virtual ceremony with the ambassador, honoree, and guests linked via teleconference.
Ambassador Hsu praised Professor Cohen for his outstanding contributions to promoting Taiwan-U.S. legal exchanges and friendly cooperative relations. She also thanked him for his contributions to the development of human rights and the rule of law in Taiwan. “It is fair to say that Jerry has not only witnessed the entire transformation of Taiwan into the full-fledged democracy it is today, but also played no small role in the process,” the ambassador said.
Professor Cohen first visited Taiwan in 1961, when it was still under the martial law rule of Chiang Kai-shek. In his acceptance remarks, Professor Cohen recalled that economic conditions then were poor, “there was no freedom of speech and law professors were demoralized.” Over the next six decades, he visited many more times and witnessed Taiwan’s transformation to a vibrant democracy. In each of 2013 and 2017, Professor Cohen participated in a review by international human rights specialists of Taiwan’s progress in implementing the two major UN human rights covenants. In his remarks today, he congratulated the government for recently establishing a National Human Rights Commission.
Professor Cohen is a leading expert on Chinese law and government and pioneer in the field of Asian legal studies in the United States, having established the East Asian Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School in 1965. He joined the NYU School of Law in 1990 and founded the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at the law school in 2006. He retired from full-time teaching on June 30, one day before his 90th birthday. The NYU School of Law marked the occasion by announcing the establishment of an endowed chair in his name, the Jerome A. Cohen Professorship of Law.
Earlier this year, Professor Cohen received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Yale University, where he had earned his JD in 1955. The Government of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, in 2018.
NYU Law announces endowed chair and fall programs to honor Professor Jerome A. Cohen on his retirement
For nearly 60 years—the past 30 at NYU School of Law—Professor Jerome A. Cohen has been a towering figure in the fields of Chinese law and East Asian legal studies. To celebrate him on the occasion of his retirement on June 30, the Law School is delighted to announce the establishment of an endowed chair in his name, as well as a series of virtual events this fall focused on critical legal issues in East Asia.
Event Recording: Vietnam’s New Approach to the South China Sea Disputes
In this webinar recorded on May 27, 2020, Trang Phạm Ngọc Minh, a lecturer at Vietnam National University and recent Fulbright scholar in residence at USALI, explained why Vietnam – long suspicious of international law and United Nations institutions – recently filed a note verbale with the United Nations formally protesting China’s claims to historic title to much of the South China Sea and setting out its own claims within the bounds set by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Event Recording: Paul Mozur & Josh Chin: Journalists in the Crossfire
Event Recording: A Discussion of the U.S.-China Technology Relationship & The Politics of Data
In this webinar recorded on May 22, 2020, Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and Cybersecurity Policy Fellow at New America, spoke with Professor Jose Alvarez, USALI’s lead faculty advisor, about the struggle among governments to determine who can access our digital data and how it can be used.
Event Recording: M. Butterfly 2.0: The Evolution of EU-China Relations
In this webinar recorded on May 13, 2020, Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies, and Peter Dutton, professor at the U.S. Naval War College and USALI senior fellow, discussed how China’s growing economic leverage in Europe and recent “wolf warrior” diplomacy are pushing the European Union and its member states to take geopolitics more seriously and choose a side in the U.S.-China rivalry.